


Deep Dark Woods

by tofsla



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Childhood, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-16
Updated: 2012-06-16
Packaged: 2017-11-07 21:05:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/435453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/pseuds/tofsla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alone in the woods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deep Dark Woods

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2008.

The woods are old and dark and creepy, and sometimes they fill up with mist so you can't see a thing. They can change in just a moment, like flicking a light-switch; now you see it, now you don't. It's a weird place, and not somewhere they're meant to go, but sometimes people do anyway.

The other kids - the _normal_ kids - tell stories about ghosts that live in the forest and can come out to get you when the mist rolls in. They don't tell them to Gojyo, but sometimes if he sits high up in trees and keeps very still they don't notice he's there, and then they talk about things where he can hear and they don't go quiet or leave. That's pretty much his experience of what Normal means: stealing glimpses of it from the outside, when no-one knows he's looking. 

He doesn't think the woods are haunted. Even if they are, so what? There are scarier things than dead people. Way scarier.

Anyway, he's not afraid of anything.

He walks into the deep, dark woods. One step at a time, twigs crunching underfoot.

The trees loom all around, knotted fingers reaching out of the gloom.

He's _not_ afraid.

Step. Crunch. Step. Crunch.

Crunch.

Gojyo freezes. He didn't move, but something else did. There's _something else there._

One second, two seconds, three seconds, and he lets out a slow, careful breath. He can't see anything, can't hear anything, except his own heartbeat hammering behind his ribs. It's just surprise; he's not afraid. Ghosts don't break twigs anyway. Maybe it was a bird.

He keeps walking, as though he's dared himself, bet himself he can't do it and is out to prove himself wrong. Normal kids get dared by other people. Normal kids with normal hair and mothers who make lunches for them before they leave the house in the morning. Kids who aren't freaks.

But he's a freak, so he has to make do.

Looking back over his shoulder, now, he can only see trees. In any direction he looks, just trees, low and twisted, keeping out the light, making the whole place murky. Sometimes things scuttle or flit through the half-light. But animals have gotta live in here. Animals live everywhere. Nothing spooky.

Nothing spooky at all.

It's kind of disappointing, really. Or that's what he's beginning to think before the fog arrives.

When you're in it it's really too thick to just be called mist. Mist is when stuff gets a bit indistinct in the distance. This stuff makes him feel almost blind, makes him stumble over low branches he can only see right when he's about to walk into them. Whiteout.

Every now and again something looms at him out of the darkness, and every time it turns out to be a tree, but every time there's a moment when he wonders if it might not be.

Not that he's _really_ afraid.

The ghosts probably don't want him anyway. He bets he doesn't taste good.

It doesn't take him long, though, to realise he doesn't know where he's going. He could be walking in circles or anything. Or about to fall off a cliff. Or get pounced on by a ghost.

Nah. There _are no ghosts._

But he stops walking and peers around cautiously, just in case; reaches his arms out in front of him and stumbles a few more steps until one of his hands brushes against the rough, damp trunk of a tree and, temporarily defeated, slumps down to sit against it to wait for a change in the weather, or _something._ Anything, really. He's not picky.

"Hey ghosts," he says, "come and get me. I'm right here."

His voice sounds muffled, deadened. Just kinda weird, really. It makes him feel unpleasantly small and alone, though he really is both of those things, so he probably shouldn't mind.

He does, all the same.

Has anyone noticed that he's gone yet? He didn't tell Jien he was heading out before he left. He tried to tell mum, but she was having one of her moods. It'd have been stupid to make her more upset.

So maybe no-one actually knows where he is.

Maybe they don't care. He wouldn't blame them.

"Come on, ghosts," he says, in a really small voice this time, though it's not 'cause he's afraid. Ghosts probably have really sensitive hearing, that's all. "Where are you? I'm not running."

He closes his eyes and feels the chilliness of the fog against his bare arms, can almost imagine that the fog is shaping itself into some ghostly form, reaching out insubstantial fingers to brush against his skin. He shivers. And waits. And waits.

If there are any ghosts here they're only the ones that came along with him from home, whispering about all the same old things.

It isn't fair. Not that it matters.

"I'm not running," he whispers again. "'cause I'm not afraid."


End file.
